DC's New 52 initiative saw the reboot and rethinking of many of their titles and characters, for better or for worse. In the Batman line of comics the main characters remained mostly unchanged, save for the healing of long-crippled Barbara Gordon. The caped crusader's villains, meanwhile, were host to a series of radical reinventions, from Harley Quinn taking on her...non-traditional costume from the Arkham videogame series to The Joker cutting his face of for reasons we still don't quite understand. The biggest change was reserved for Harvey Dent. Far from the white knight out to rescue Gotham City from the gutter, the Dent we meet in the New 52 universe is right down there with them, a defense attorney who uses every dirty trick in the book to get his uniformly guilty criminal clients off. It's only after getting tied to the sociopathic twin sisters from the McKillen crime family, Shannon and Erin, that Dent gets forced into being a good guy. Bruce Wayne funds his campaign to District Attorney, hoping to keep him from getting involved with the twins' criminal activities and to apply his knowledge of legal loopholes to keeping bad guys off the streets. Naturally that all goes down the pan as soon as he has the McKillen sisters committed to a maximum security prison, where one of them promptly kills herself. The surviving twin breaks out of the jail, tracks down Dent, and seeks revenge by murdering his wife before his eyes and then pouring acid all over his face. After she flees the country Dent, as Two-Face, takes control of the McKillen crime family in Gotham and runs it until Erin returns to wrestle it back from him. After jailing Erin before Two-Face can enact his own form of justice upon her, Batman tries to stop Dent's own criminal escapades, attempting to talk him down by reminding him of all the good he did as DA. Refusing to listen to reason, the villain nevertheless admits to knowing Bruce Wayne's secret identity but keeping it to himself and not killing him, despite being tempted to do both. Then he goes home and shoots himself in the head. So, er, yeah. In the New 52, Harvey Dent killed himself at the end of Batman and Two-Face #28 from February 2014. He was alive during the Forever Evil crossover event, but we're still unsure about the timing of that, so either DC wants us to forget that he's supposed to be dead or want us to just discount his existence at all. Because he's dead. Quite an ignoble fate for one of Batman's greatest villains. What were the chances of that?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
